FDM Cinderella Mix, and a few friends too

Indoor Growing Growroom Diaries
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Day 4 of 12/12, Pruning Lower Growth

Seems none of my “before” pics turned out, and few of my “after” pics. Suffice it to say that I took off what seems like half of the above-ground biomass today, leaving only about the top 6"-8" on each branch, and removed any branches that would not reach the canopy.

These pics are representative of the end result:

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They should all have plenty of time to recover just fine; stretch hasn’t even really gotten started yet. I imagine there’s a bit more pruning that will need to be done by the end of stretch, but this seemed like a good start. It might look like I was overzealous right now, but if these end up around 40" as expected they’ll still pack on plenty of biomass before flower gets fully under way.

(I really need to get a camera, this phone takes lousy freaking pictures)

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Nice lush canopy there!

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Some quick shots of one of the two FDM males, to show off the zig-zag growth it has on all of the tips.

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The female plant has the same trait, but it’s far more difficult to get a photo of, being in the back of a crowded area. The other male does not have the trait, it’s straight as an arrow.

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Best day time strain I’ve tried. Would love to get some Astro Boy seeds. Got some friends growing some feminized Durban poison from idk what breeder. I’m going to get a clone from one of them.

EDIT: friends are growin the Crop King 40% indica “Durban poison”…

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Looks like my kind of strain too :grinning:

Was in a hurry, forgot to say that the pics above are one of the C99 mix males. It’s doing that zig zag even more than my Apollo 11 cross female, lol. Should make a nice cross together, I’m thinking :wink:

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this is a cool site shows some in-depth background on the genetics and goes on to say unfortunately this strain is mostly sold out! not sure as of what date but this helps me see why it is hard to recreate and stabilize a strain when it comes from two hybrid parents and generations of often randomly occurring reccessive phenotypes.

Seems like the Cinderella 99 and Durban Poison are some of the most stable Sativas? My knowledge is basically limited to Haze vs Kush.

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Flower, Day 10

Dropped my “mobile device slash kind of a camera” in the mixing bucket while I was mixing up a batch of nutes a few days ago. R.I.P. We had a few good years together.

In the meantime, I’m using the wife’s phone to take pics, and… It’s not good. This is the best I can do for a group shot. Can’t seem to correct the white balance to compensate for the lights, etc. But it’s probably good enough to get the picture :wink:

Out of the original eight FDM seeds, there are only three left: two males and a female. Each of them is at the very least a distinct pheno from each of the others, if not a different cross entirely. All three seem like pretty good selections, and I’m very happy with all of them so far. In the photo above the FDM female is back center, and the males are both on the right. I’ll try to get individual shots soon-ish.

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Flower Day 16

Decided to remove one of the final two FDM males from the tent. I like it quite a bit, so I’m in the process of collecting the pollen for future use, but I just don’t like it as much as the other FDM male as far as what I’m looking for right now.

Removed male

I really like this male quite a bit. I love the leaf shape, the vigor, etc. I’m pleased to be able to save the pollen for future use. It did get a chance to drop some pollen before i removed it, but not a lot. I would have preferred to keep it around and let it fully mature like the other one, but it’s just not practical at this time. Even as young as it is, I should get enough pollen out of it to be useful.

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Last Remaining FDM Male

As much as I liked the male above, I love the one below. Both of these males have had many, many branches removed due to space concerns, and yet this thing is still a massive mess of branches that all want to reach toward the canopy. It’s crazy, lol. The more I looked at it, the more I realized that this is the one I prefer to make use of for this run.

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Oh. I didn’t even realize that the male I chopped today had red sap until about five minutes ago when I went to put the branches in water…

I can’t get any good photos of it, but this should show what I mean.

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I had originally placed the branches on clean sheets of paper, and when I went in twenty minutes later to put the branches into water I found all these little blood dots on the paper.

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I’m glad I’m saving the pollen anyways, lol :wink:

Btw, this is the male that @Baudelaire had said (earlier in this thread) might be a General’s Daughter cross.

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This is awesome, all this time I had thought a light tight container was necessary for root development, and here you are doing it in a see through food container. That makes the options much easier. Goes to show, sometimes you get told something and just accept it without testing, it’s always worthwhile to question ‘weed lore’ :slight_smile:

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To be fair, I only showed the original container. I do have the side that receives the most light lined with reflective insulation, but even the lid is not fully opaque. It’s far from dark inside, but I’ve never had a problem with it :wink:

Actually, that reminds me… The cuttings I showed earlier in this thread have rooted and have been transplanted into Solo cups. They are hardening off and getting ready for the veg cab. Will grab some photos soon.

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I hear you mate, I was outdoors only for maybe 20 years. I see them as different things that only sometimes overlap. It’s really only since LED’s started hitting serious levels of efficiency that I got into indoor, and also after seeing and helping out on the technical stuff on other peoples setups/grows. I was involved in a lot of other peoples indoor adventures well before I bothered, mostly because HID lighting was just too much of a PITA here where electricity is stupidly expensive and it’s already as hot as Hades 2/3 of the year.

In my part of the world, it’s been two of the worst out grow seasons I can remember. Last year it just rained constantly for the month leading up to harvest and maybe 2/3 was lost to mould, this year it did not rain more than 6 mm for nearly three months during peak veg, and THEN summer hail storms started 3 months late right on harvest time. Like it’s really challenging outdoors when it’s like this, AND the predictability of the weather is getting worse. This year was a whole lot of lugging for not much output.

Where I like indoors is in how fast you can turn things over plant wise, so breeding times can be shortened. It’s true that growing a variety outdoors will typically lead to variation in phenotype expression, but there are often enough selectable traits you can look for in cupboard weed to get a good outdoor variety started and fine tuned for the outdoor environment you are growing it. This year I had 4 seedlings that never got planted out that sat for 3 months and survived the entire season in seedling pots with no rain and just the occasional morning fog, and these have come from selecting indoors varieties that put up with extreme dry hot conditions. You gotta be a bit of a techy to do indoor, it appeals to people who like to be able to tweak things.

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This rings mostly true to me :wink:

In my case, it’s also true that outdoor is not really an option.

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High brix pheno!! Awesome! You’ll have your own dragon blood soon.

I don’t know what you were talking about with the problems you’re facing you are killing it here!

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This is mostly a “note to self” kind of stoned rambling post…

I’ve been thinking about this root ball a lot over the last few days.

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It’s been sitting on my back deck for months now. It’s from a recent run of VGS Bubba Kush S1, and this particular plant yielded very well and treated me to a nice haul of sticky, stinky, funky, potent smoke.

The plant was grown in a 2 gallon (8" x 8") Smart Pot filled with Canna coco, hand watered at least twice daily with Mega Crop original formula and Epsom at 1.2 EC throughout. The entire smart pot was so densely packed with roots that you can still see where the seam was, and how I had to literally rip away the felt in order to remove the root ball. The finest roots are all gone by now, but what remains of the root ball is still pretty dense.

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I hate how Smart Pots dry out so quickly on the outside that it often seems that the root ball never fully populates the outer inch or two. In an effort to address that and limit the rate of evaporation from the sides while still retaining the root pruning benefit, I had wrapped the sides of the pot in a permeable plastic weed block material that had a lot of tiny holes in it for breathability.

I also added a thick layer of crushed pumice on the top to act as a mulch that I could pour through quickly, and that allowed the roots to make use of all of the available media.

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When I first chopped the plant, trying to tear apart the root ball was like trying to rip a phone book in half, so I gave up and it has been sitting there ever since. Even after months of sitting in the weather decomposing, it’s not trivial to tear it apart.

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I’m not as pleased with the 6" Floraflex pots as I’d hoped I would be. Perhaps if I’d stuck to fully synthetic nutes and automated watering I would feel differently, but the way that I’m using them now isn’t using them to their best potential.

I’m thinking I might want to go back to Smart Pots in the near future, with a few minor changes to the way I’ve been using them :smiley:

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I’ve been meaning to post this for days now, but I’ve not been feeling well so it’s been hard to get motivated. Way back I mentioned that the cuttings in my little DIY cloner had rooted, but I never posted an update, so…

FDM Cinderella99 Mix Clones

I kept a clone of each of the females I got from the FDM pack. I’m only growing out the #3 plant in the flower tent at the moment, but kept clones of the other two so that I can run them next round.

It’s early days and I know that I can expect the scents to change over time, but right now the #3 smells like very sweet citrus / tropical fruit, and I love it so far.

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And a closeup of the clone from the #3 plant which is in flower now. The #3 mother was covered in pollen from the two male siblings and looks like it will produce a few thousand seeds, lol :slight_smile:

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Highlighter’s A11 x (F13 x A11) Clones

I also made a couple of clones of the only female from the A11 x (F13 x A11) seeds. The mother in flower now was quite thoroughly dusted with pollen from the male sibling, and I’m really looking forward to sorting through those seeds, but I also wanted to keep a couple of clones to run seedless.

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The mother smells very interesting, btw. If you’re familiar with Powder Hound, a strain that’s high in Terpinolene and Caryophyllene, then you know exactly what it smells like. There’s a quality that’s somewhat reminiscent of Dutch Treat in there, but overall it’s more citrus to me. I have no idea what these are supposed to smell like, so I don’t know if what I smell is unusual or not for these genetics. Maybe I’ll ask my wife to describe it, she is usually better at describing scents, and has a much more sensitive sniffer.

As for the main flowering plants, I’ll post an update soon. I have encountered a few issues and the plants aren’t looking their best, but they are bouncing back. I’m bouncing back a bit finally as well, so I should have the energy and motivation to get that done soon(ish) :wink:

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Those are some damn happy clones. The first group look like plants that have been grown in the sun, if that makes any sense lol

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Those look amazing! So healthy! Nice job, Man!

btw… Love that Japanese screen

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Thank you @beacher and @Meesh for the kind words, much appreciated! :smile:

In other news, my cheap TDS pen finally died a few days ago while I was trying to recalibrate it. I received a new meter and calibration solution today, and immediately tested the EC of my nutrient solution. The EC was so far off from what I expected it to be that now I feel like my whole life has been a lie, and am second-guessing all of my major life choices. :wink:

I will be recalibrating all of my meters and making some changes in my feed strength and schedule starting tomorrow. I think this may explain a lot of what has happened in the last week to ten days in the flower tent.

“Story to come,” as they say.

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Oh no, thats like a recurring nightmare i have…but even though i stress about it sometimes I still don’t take the 3 minutes to calibrate my pens lol

My thinking is that the pen is ‘accurate’ compared to itself, so I work off that.

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